Hi All, (didnt know where was more appropriate to post this but here goes)

Recently I have been told that at a local con, they will be allowing Original Characters to compete against normal cosplay characters. I personally dont think that this is fair or makes much sense as OC's should be judged as a seperate category. How can you hold someone who designed and made their own character to the same standard of accuracy and character presentation and portrayal as someone who is recreating a known character?? How are you to know that the person achieved what they set out to achieve and didnt fail, I could easily draw the character I created and present that as a concept sketch. How can you tell an OC creator that their interpretation of their own character is wrong? To me the two should remain seperate and have rules which apply to their different creative processes.

For my part, I see nothing wrong with original designs and recreations competing on the same footing. It's not that hard for judges to consider accuracy when it's an applicable factor of a costume's awesomeness and ignore it as a factor when it's not.

Yeah, Capsulecorp talks about that in the OC character thread I started. Personally, I'm glad when cons allow OCs to compete in the costume contest, considering OCs were what got cosplay at cons started in the first place

I'm all for OC's but I do still think they should be in a different category.

There are definitely still challenges but they're different challenges. I've done both and know you can put a lot of work into either - but it's very different when it comes to what's involved and the choices you can make.

But basically, unless the masquerade director has specifically decided that THEIR masquerade is about "character portrayal" and who can look or act the most like a canon character, and tells you that, then nope. Nope nope nope. All costumes are fair game because accuracy is not the only thing that people are judged on. Not by a long shot.

__________________Founder and President, Madison Area Costuming Society, a chapter of the International Costumer's Guild

ok will direct my comments to that thread, I saw it and wasnt sure whether I should post it there becus of the thread title and the fact that what im saying here has nothing to do with Oc's having a bad rap as the case may be. To me its unrelated, but having gone thru the thread ive seen the issue come up there.